The mortgage industry is going through changes involving a great deal of evolution around tracking applications, approvals, and servicing customers in more intuitive ways. We spoke with some of our team members across Salesforce and strategy consulting and customer engagement to dig into the main obstacles facing mortgage lenders today, as well as the unique opportunities to better serve and engage stakeholders with analytics and AI.
What are the most pressing challenges for lenders and customers in the mortgage industry right now?
Linda Russell, Strategy Consultant
People contacting the mortgage industry from different phone numbers and different email addresses (home vs. work), as well as spouses and nicknames or misspellings make it challenging to dedupe and consolidate the same caller/household/loan (lead and account) together.
Gene Zeyger, Director of Customer Engagement
Due to the overwhelming number of refinancings and loan origination requests, mortgage companies are spending significant amounts of money prioritizing their workload. During the origination process, the questions that must be answered include: Which leads are likely to close? What are the key issues affecting loan officer performance and productivity? How can we reduce cycle time?
For servicers it’s all about productivity: How can we make our team more efficient? Which workflows can be automated? Can we reduce the number of systems? Can we improve call deflection?
Sam Berron, Salesforce Consultant
Right now, mortgage lenders are finding themselves in the enviable, yet tricky to manage situation of an exploding number of customer requests. The combination of low rates combined with economic uncertainty is driving this. The biggest challenge we are seeing mortgage lenders facing now is addressing how to handle this overwhelming volume.
What kind of strides are modern mortgage lenders making with analytics? Additionally, what are the most common use cases for predictive analytics and AI?
Linda Russell, Strategy Consultant
Keeping track of loan officers’ calling quota and results, and Next Best Action based on past interests and activities.
Gene Zeyger, Director of Customer Engagement
Because of the call center approach and nature of the business for most mortgage companies, the first priority is to provide real-time or near real-time visibility into agent productivity. In near real time, the organization must know how agents and loan officers are performing, what is working vs. ineffective, overall activity, and detailed breakdowns. Once the call center is “humming,” we can begin to leverage data for predictive analysis within loan officers’ workflow to answer questions such as: What is the likelihood of this loan to move to application and close?
Sam Berron, Salesforce Consultant
In terms of generating new business, the primary metrics we have seen lenders be concerned with are agent productivity and lead conversion metrics. Loan officers are a competitive bunch, and love to see how they’re tracking vs. their peers for KPIs such as number of loans locked, number of loans funded, and number of apps taken.
Also, having insight into which lead sources best convert is extremely helpful for prioritization, especially in the current environment where lenders are inundated with customer requests.
Why FSC for mortgage lenders? What are the competitive advantages?
Linda Russell, Strategy Consultant
Avoid having to work loan applications with an external system, swivel chair, and duplicate data entry — a time waster. Salesforce’s Financial Services Cloud (FSC) provides the framework, features, and functionality that all lenders have in common and therefore can enforce consistency and best practice procedures, ensuring immediate ROI. Features like Life Events Tracking, Householding, and Action Plans are out of the box and relevant in the user’s workspaces, allowing them better visibility into their customer’s needs and situations.
Gene Zeyger, Director of Customer Engagement
FSC extends the already powerful Salesforce platform with mortgage-specific capabilities that facilitate best practices of managing common processes such as loan applications. These allow for a well-defined way to work with loan origination systems and other mortgage-specific solutions to provide “one pane of glass” for loan officers and serving representatives.
Sam Berron, Salesforce Consultant
FSC Mortgage enables lenders to build out a more standardized system according to industry best practices. As with all Salesforce implementations, minimizing custom config and code increases development throughput and minimizes risk — wins for the business.
Why should mortgage lenders work with Atrium to implement Salesforce in a data-driven manner leveraging analytics and AI?
Sam Berron, Salesforce Consultant
Atrium is in a unique position in that we are experts in data and analytics, as well as financial services business processes. We are your one-stop shop for getting it done and will guide you from start to finish.
Learn more about our services and how we help businesses in the financial sector thrive.
